


Lost and Lonely No More

by sophinisba



Series: Three Travelers that Never Landed on the Lost Island [3]
Category: Lost, Pushing Daisies
Genre: Community: purimgifts, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-21
Updated: 2008-03-21
Packaged: 2017-10-05 21:55:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophinisba/pseuds/sophinisba





	Lost and Lonely No More

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Roga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roga/gifts).



Upon booking her first trip away from her aunts since the age of nine, lonely tourist Charlotte Charles was promised a high-seas adventure. Nor was she disappointed. And, although she did not find true love for herself on that voyage, she did witness it, and she was pointed in the right direction for the return journey.

Two days out from a planned stop in Tahiti, her cruise ship entered a storm in which one of the other passengers was swept out to sea. Charlotte, who could not have known that this man had intended to smother her with plastic bag while she was fetching ice that very evening, grieved for him as she would have for any other stranger and fellow traveler.

Still, she had very little time for tears, for as soon as the storm cleared someone shouted that there was land in view, and the captain announced that they would be making port, not because there _was_ an actual port or they expected to find any of the supplies they needed on the tiny island, but because they'd received a distress call.

The mention of Oceanic flight 815 meant little to Charlotte, who in sympathy with her aunts' phobias had forgone watching television news in recent years. But it put the other passengers in a foul, anxious mood. When a call went out for volunteers to help with the rescue mission, only a few were willing to go.

So Charlotte, Frank, Miles, and Daniel approached the wide, sandy shore in two small motorboats with what medical supplies they could carry. They could see a knot of people waiting on the beach, looking a lot less famished and bedraggled than Charlotte might have expected. Only one of them really looked like a castaway – a tall, lean man with a scruffy beard and long hair – and that man was so impatient that he ran out into the waves to meet Charlotte and Daniel before they could get out of the boat.

"Did Penny send you?" he demanded, and the way he clutched at the side of the boat and the half-mad gleam in his eyes made Charlotte slightly nervous, but she also thought it was understandable, considering how long he'd been stranded here.

"Excuse me?" she said, as gently as she could while shouting over the waves.

"Your ship, your voyage," he yelled, "was it funded by Penelope Widmore?"

She shook her head. "No, I'm sorry. My voyage was funded by Deedee Duffield of Boutique Travel Travel Boutique. And Daniel here…" She hesitated.

"Oxford University," said her fellow rescuer. "They, uh...thought I needed a vacation."

"You've not heard of Penny then."

"No," said Charlotte, hating the way his face fell. "We do have a large luxury cruise ship though, and there should be room to take all of you back."

"There's shuffleboard," Daniel offered, "and dance reviews four nights a week. The food's really good."

"You really just want to get back to Penny though, I can see," said Charlotte.

"More than anything."

"Let's get on our way then. How many of you are there?"

He climbed into the boat and came to shore with them. Charlotte liked this young man, whose name was Desmond. He spoke with a Scottish accent, which she'd always found had an intoxicating effect on her – she'd lose track of the words a man was speaking if he pronounced them in that particular way. But she thought how much she would like to hear someone speaking about _her_ the way Desmond spoke about Penny, no matter what kind of accent he used.

On shore they found out that no one was actually injured or starving, and that some of them weren't even interested in being rescued. But those who did want to leave climbed into the boats happily enough. Desmond seemed to know a lot more about boats than Charlotte or Daniel did, and he took over steering them back toward the cruise ship. Charlotte watched him, thinking that she'd never cared about anyone, or had someone care about her, the way Desmond seemed to care for Penelope. She loved her aunts Lily and Vivian and knew they loved her, but she also understood that the two of them would help each other through whatever storms came their way. They had known each other all their lives, and they didn't truly need anyone else. What did Charlotte have to go back to in Coeur d'Coeurs when her sojourn in the South Pacific was over?

But perhaps there was someone after all. Charlotte thought back to her childhood, to before she'd gone to live with her aunts, before the sudden and untimely death of her father. There was a boy she used to play with, a boy who called her Chuck and grinned in her memory out of a red and green pterodactyl costume. She wondered where he was now, and whether he was as lonely as she was.

When she got home, she decided, she'd do her best to find out.


End file.
